About three months ago I started a study of the Lord’s Prayer found in Mt. 6:5-15. I have about 50 old, many public domain, commentaries I picked up online. I am going through each one, culling out the gems on the Lord’s Prayer. It’s been a remarkable experience for many reasons. First, though I anticipated the possibilities would be good, I have learned much, much more about the Lord’s Prayer than I anticipated. Virtually every day there is something new. With this many commentaries, one can imagine the variety of approaches, thought, and analysis I have experienced. It has redounded as a great blessing to me; one that is difficult to summarize. Second, I have come to appreciate that there are many faithful students of the scriptures who are not Latter-day Saints, but who love the Lord and have invested considerable thought and creative effort to express those thoughts in their writings about scripture. I know that many, if not most of them, would disagree with my basic Christian view, but that said, I have been lifted, edified, inspired, motivated, and thrilled by the things I have encountered in this three-month journey. I not only don’t mind saying so, I feel an obligation to do so.
An example of all of this is below. If you have served a mission you may have experienced something which seems to be common–sometimes you don’t find that golden investigator until you reach the last house on the lane after hours of walking and being rejected, or at the top of a large apartment building which you were ready to leave to go to dinner, but you only had one more floor to finish it up. Well, that is sort of what happened to me this morning. I have studied these commentaries a half an hour or more each morning for the past three months. I am presently working on the 48th one in the collection. Yet, this morning I read one of the very best items of many great ones I’ve encountered during this journey.
I know nothing about David James Vaughan, except I love what he wrote which I have reproduced below. In Mt. 6:9 the Lord instructs us to address God as “Our Father which art in heaven.” In the excerpt below Vaughan concentrates on one aspect of the fatherhood of God–his love for his children. His insights touched me deeply. You read it (I suggest carefully) and then I will have a few additional comments (please note especially number 6 below.) Enjoy!
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There is no greater secret, of all truth and holiness and joy, than to have correct and grand views of the ‘fatherly’ relationship and character of God. Therefore, by all strange ways, the enemy of our peace tries to misrepresent it. God has made ‘the father’ His metaphor, and one great reason why God has established the relationship of a ‘father’ for this earth is to lead up to Him.
I. Love antecedent.—A ‘father’s’ love must, of necessity, precede the love of the child: long before the child can really know or love him, he has known and loved the child. The child’s love is the response and echo, after long intervals. You cannot conceive the time when God began to love you. But you can very easily date almost the hour when you began to love Him. God had done thousands of things for you before you ever did one thing for Him.
II. Love anticipatory.—Being antecedent, it is always anticipatory. It is a love that always stands in the front. A son little knows and thinks of all that’ a father’ has been thinking for him when he was helpless, and unconscious, and asleep. And you are not conscious of a millionth part of what has been going on within the veil of the great Father’s address to you. When you came into the world, there was everything ready for you; and your life commenced, has gone on all through, a planned one. It has all been a copy of a chart which lay for ever and ever in the breast of Godhead. Therefore it is the Divine love so exceeds the human.
III. Love prospective.—A ‘father’s’ love to his child has always—though the child may not see it—a reference to the child’s future. A ‘father’s’ love always has in itself something of the nature of education—therefore it disciplines you. It is just so with God. His love, and every act of it, always has a future in it. And just as a ‘father,’ being a man, trains his child for manhood, so God, being eternal, trains his creatures for eternity. You can only read a ‘father’s’ love in that light. It is always prospective love, mysterious—just because God sees: a future which His child does not see.
IV. Love’s qualities.—
(a) A ‘father’ never magnifies a child’s faults. He always sees excellences more than he sees the bad points. Is that the way in which you think of God’s looking on you? Do not you generally think of God exactly the opposite?—quick to see what is wrong—watching for sins—and, when He sees them, slow to forgive them.
(b) A ‘father’s’ love is always equal to all his children. Can God be partial? And yet you often think of God as very partial, and fancy that He does not love you as much as He loves some other.
(c) A ‘father’s’ love is a very wide thing. It takes in with a large embrace all the little things and all the great things in his child’s life—all and everything.
(d) A ‘father s’ love never dies. Whatever the child may do—whatever the ‘father’ may be constrained to do, upon whatever his child does, it does not alter a ‘father’s’ love. He may punish—he may be angry—he may hide himself; but his love is unchanging. And why is this in the ‘father’? Because his relation approaches and assimilates to God’s relation to His creatures. He is a representative on earth of God. He is a ‘father.’ God is a ‘Father’!
It will take you out of a great many distresses and difficulties if you will only remember ‘the Fatherhood of God.’(1)
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Here are just a few of the thoughts that this passage generated:
1. The first sentence reminds me very much of something Joseph Smith said in his famous King Follett discourse: “It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God....”(2) Vaughan’s addition is that Satan tries to misrepresent God’s character as Father.
2. There is a spirit and sweetness permeating this passage which strikes at the core of my being.
3. I am pretty sure my children would raise an eyebrow at his assertion that a father “never magnifies a child’s faults.” I was young, had almost no wisdom, and had never been a father before! But I do try now to see their excellencies more than their faults.
4. I was taken aback, nearly bowled over, by his explanation that the love God as our Father has for us, like our earthly fathers, began long before we knew or loved him. “You cannot conceive the time when God began to love you,” he writes. Latter-day Saints may have a leg up on most Christians as far as that is concerned. Nevertheless, even we probably only see through a glass darkly on that subject. But this statement wrenched my heart as I realized the truth of it, because of my knowledge of the pre-mortal existence.
5. Similarly, the truth of the expression “A son little knows and thinks of all that ‘a father’ has been thinking for him when he was helpless, and unconscious, and asleep. And you are not conscious of a millionth part of what has been going on within the veil of the great Father’s address to you.” The frequency with which that happened and continues to happen, should have led me to consider this in relationship to Heavenly Father long before now. Alas!
6. The truth of these ideas is really almost self-evident, but I only encountered them the first time this morning! I am writing this and sharing it with you in hopes that learning them now may be a great blessing to you for a much longer period of your life than it will be for mine.
7. Finally, he gives two examples of principles pertaining to God’s love as a Father, which when we think of God, we often do in the exact opposite way. 1) Do we not think God concentrates on and magnifies our faults, rather than our excellencies? 2) Do we not think God’s love is partial and fancy that he does not love us as much as others, rather than loving all of his children equally? Take the positive view here and these become stunning and meaningful insights that tend to draw your heart to God.
I hope you enjoyed James Vaughan.
Let’s think together again, soon.
Notes:
1. The Rev. James Vaughan, cited in James Nisbet, The Church Pulpit Commentary, (Mt. 6:9), from Bible Analyzer software available online at http://bibleanalyzer.com/
2. Joseph Fielding Smith, comp., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1967, 345.
